3 major publications refuse to reveal details about Trump campaign breech — unlike 2016 Clinton hack

13 August 2024

Cybersecurity experts have been warning about the possibility of the 2024 presidential election being targeted by hackers and subversives. Now, the Associated Press' David Bauder is reporting that hackers leaked confidential material from Donald Trump's campaign to three major media outlets: the New York Times, the Washington Post and Politico — all of which, according to Bauder, have so far "refused to reveal any details about what they received."

Instead, they have discussed the hack "in broad terms" without getting into specifics, Bauder reports.

Bauder, in an August 13 article, notes, "Their decisions stand in marked contrast to the 2016 presidential campaign, when a Russian hack exposed emails to and from Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager, John Podesta. The website Wikileaks published a trove of these embarrassing missives, and mainstream news organizations covered them avidly."

The AP reporter adds, "Politico wrote over the weekend about receiving e-mails starting July 22 from a person identified as 'Robert' that included a 271-page campaign document about Vance and a partial vetting report on Sen. Marco Rubio, who was also considered as a potential vice president. Both Politico and the Post said that two people had independently confirmed that the documents were authentic.

According to Bauder, it is "unclear who provided the material" — and Politico has said it doesn't know who "Robert" is.

Bauder reports that the Times told AP it would not discuss internal communications on the matter. And a spokesperson for the Post told AP, "As with any information we receive, we take into account the authenticity of the materials, any motives of the source and assess the public interest in making decisions about what, if anything, to publish."

The hack is receiving a lot of discussion on X, formerly Twitter.

Bloomberg News' Matthew Yglesias, in response to AP's reporting, tweeted, "Is the fake difference here that the hackers didn’t find a cutout like Wikileaks to use?

Jennifer Sensiba noted, "News outlets seem to expect Democrats to pull punches while Trump straight up lies. It was probably something lurid or gossipy but with no policy value so they chose to sit on it."

Democratic activist Felicity Pereyra argued, "Outlets in 2016 could have chosen to ignore WikiLeaks dump, but they didn’t."

Will Hutchinson tweeted, "Hoping the difference is that nothing in there was really newsworthy and they did the right thing not reporting it as if it was. Nothing in Hillary's emails or Hunter's 'laptop' was really newsworthy either. If something actually newsworthy is in there, it's a conundrum."

Voice of San Diego's Scott Lewis posted, "Yeah? The gatekeeper impulse always exists but if there’s no gate, then it’s just a frenzy."

Read the full Associated Press article at this link.

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